


Home is where

by AnonymousCauliflower



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: All in that order, Explicit Consent, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Non-Con, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, brief gore happening to the badies, like how many spelling mistakes can you fit into one chapter??, offers up the next four chapters as an apology, story has been updated with less typos, the author regrets everything about the first chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-12 01:31:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11726700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousCauliflower/pseuds/AnonymousCauliflower
Summary: Furiosa is forced to perform sexual acts on a tied up Max.That's the plot of the first chapter. The rest of this fic is a much gentler story.





	1. Max

**Author's Note:**

> It's been almost two years since I wrote this story. The reason I haven't uploaded it yet is because of the very graphic non-con in the first chapter, and I'm not sure just how much I want the rest of my work to be associated with that. And to be quite honest I'm a little nervous about how it'll be received. So fair warning, don't read if you can't stomach non-con. No seriously, I grossed myself out with this and I'm the one who wrote it. But I like parts of this story a lot, and I put a lot of time into it it as well, and so I thought fuck it, and made a new 'anonymous' account where it can live its life a free bird.
> 
> As I said, the remaining chapters will be a much gentler story involving a reasonable amount of angst and healing. Although I doubt people recover from trauma in real life the same way they do here, so there's that. But there will be healing, and fluff and tenderness and explicit consent!
> 
> All five chapters are finished and I'll be uploading them as I rewrite the story.
> 
> EDIT: Corrected some typos.

It's things like this that makes him doubt the validity of that old instinct to help. The solitary figure standing by the side of the road had seemed genuinely helpless. Young. Someone who needed care. Needed to be brought someplace safe where water and green could be provided.  
  
  
  
He must have grown soft, maybe even old. Lost track of his own age as well as his surroundings, because he hadn't even checked that crevice in the rocks where his ambushers hid. Maybe he was too tired after driving through the night. Maybe he was looking for a reason to go back.  
  
  
  
The ropes chaff his wrists. His hands have been tied as far up between his shoulder blades as they will go; he keeps rising up on his toes to ease the strain. Rot stains the walls of the cold, damp room he's been confined to, a cellar of some sort. A bulb fueled by a generator somewhere near paints it all in dull colors. He's not sure where he is. There’s a hazy quality to the last few hours of his memory.  
  
  
  
His guard, an oily haired man with missing front teeth, leers at Max, says something which drowns in one of Glory's unpredictable outbursts. Max flinches, and makes a noise around the rancid gag in his mouth. The guard’s grin widens. He's got a look of anticipation on his face.  
  
  
  
Fucker.  
  
  
  
They put something into the water they gave Max. Didn't even bother to hide it. He was too parched to refuse a drink. Now that he’s a little more lucid, he’d like nothing more than to chew through his own wrists to get out of his predicament. He never opened his mouth to ask why. Now and then there are rumors that move across the wasteland with the wind. Of packs who hunt for the thrill of it, who capture only to torture. People who play with their food before they eat it.  
  
  
  
_Fuckers._ _  
_  
  
  
There's noise from outside the room, and Toothless, as Glory has so aptly named him, sheathes the knife he's been trimming his nails with in his boot. The door bangs open and a group of five people enters the room. Two prisoners, lead by another man and two women. One of the prisoners gets shoved down in front of Max. He sees her face, but can't quite process it. Can't wrap his head around the short hair, the sooted face, the Vuvalini like clothes, and the fact that she's _here_.  
  
  
  
Cheedo.  
  
  
  
She treats the woman who forced her to kneel with a look of sullen defiance, one that melts away the moment she sees Max. Her eyebrows shoot up, and she stops struggling. Someone barks an order to _let the imperator bitch go first_. Max doesn't have to look to know the face of the woman who takes Cheedo's place.  
  
  


  
Furiosa doesn't let herself be manhandled that easily. With a kick to his knee, her guard sinks down yowling in pain. Even with her hands tied behind her back, both metal and flesh, she fights. That is until Toothless steps forward and points the barrel of his revolver to Cheedo's temple.  
  
  
  
He cocks his gun, grinning that slimy, hollowed out grin of his that never reaches his eyes. The angry resignation on Furiosa's face births something cold in Max's chest. Her guard scrambles to his feet again, limping and swearing. Although she's ready to go willingly, he pushes her hard towards the corner of Max's confinement.  
  
  
  
Only when she has taken Cheedo’s place in front of Max does she give any hint that she recognizes him under his shaggy hair and beard. But unlike Cheedo Furiosa’s mask doesn’t waver.  
  
  
  
Max never kept count of his days in the wasteland until that day, the one when he willingly bled for a woman he hardly knew. He'd just let each day seep into the next one. It has been two hundred and sixteen since they took the Citadel. He did his best not to think of her dying of some infection he would never be able to heal. It's a cruel mercy to see her now, healthy and strong and even a little bit rounder around the face.  
  
  
  
Toothless walks forward, leaving Cheedo in the hands of the woman that brought her inn. Something like eager anticipation fills the air of the room. The second woman coos something and licks her lips, hunger gleaming in her eyes. Furiosa doesn't flinch as a heavy hand grabs her by the back of her neck, and it’s like she anticipates it then she's pushed forward into Max.  
  
  
  
He jerks. She twists her head against his groin, and with an angry noise muffled against the fabric of his pants wrenches herself from Toothless' grip and spits in his direction. The man only chuckles. Furiosa's guard reaffirms his hold on her, forces her to look. The heavy realization of what's about to happen settles in Max's stomach just as Toothless reaches for Max's fly to roughly works his penis out.  
  
  
  
Recoiling, Max pushes into the wall, trying to curl in on himself to stop the man from putting his hands on him. He fights his ropes, but they only cut deeper into his wrists, not giving an inch. In a haze of red Max kicks after Toothless, barely missing Furiosa. The only thing it earns him is a loss of balance and a straining pain in his shoulders. Furiosa cries out, tells Toothless, _don't touch him, shmeg! Don't you fucking touch him._ _  
_  
  
  
Toothless’ only answer is a sly, quizzical sideways glance.  
  
  
  
Cold, clammy fingers wrap around Max’s cock, and the shock of it makes him go still. He pants from the rush of adrenaline. To his confusion and disgust the touch cuts through like a knife. His heartbeat quickens. Cold drops of sweat run down between his shoulder blades. His pulse thuds fast and dull in his head. Max can see himself exposed in the man’s hand, getting squeezed and pulled, and, although it doesn't register in his brain, slowly growing hard.  
  
  
  
Why are they doing this? There's no rhyme or reason to it. There is nothing here that tells Max the goal is reproduction or simple sexual gratification. There's just the sinking feeling that they just want to watch.  
  
  
  
Everything has turned hyper sharp; the rotten stench of Toothless' mouth, the warm drops dripping from Max's bound wrists, the crisp green irises under Furiosa's lashes as she can only observe. Max's thoughts go back to the substance they put in the water they gave him and he feels like screaming. His vitality has served him well in the wasteland. This is the first time it has ever betrayed him.  
  
  
  
A mad thought; a girl of Glory's age shouldn't have to witness this. But the ghost has gone silent. Disappeared like ghosts tend to do.  
  
  
  
Furiosa jerks against the hands holding her. Toothless makes a gesture and at the first cry from Cheedo she goes still again. Gripping Furiosa’s chin, Toothless tells her that if she resists, the girl will take her place. He punctuates with a vicious tug to Max’s cock.  
  
  
  
A dull ache seeps putrid through the fog in Max's brain, radiating from this stranger’s hand to churn sickeningly in his stomach. His skin has turned cold and damp with sweat, his breath shallow. Furiosa's eyes keep flicking around, away from Toothless' glare, away from what he's doing to Max. A particular twist in the hand and for the first time a shamefully sore sound escapes Max. Furiosa looks up.  
  
  
  
She asked him to get them home, her ragtag little group of revolutionists, practically begged as she was bleeding out in the back of the Gigahorse. She's got that same pleading look now. Furiosa's asking again, and Max understands that this is about the girl. Cheedo can't take her place in this. Furiosa as good as gave everything for the wives, and there's not a chance in hell she'll have them make the switch. Yet she wants his permission to go on?  
  
  
  
Does it matter?  
  
  


  
Will it change the outcome? Even in his fevered state Max understands Cheedo must be spared. So why bother?

  
  
  


The answer comes in the form of a memory. A file to remove his muzzle. A startup sequence as a sign of faith. Transfer of control as a request for aid. It matters because that’s who Furiosa is. Would she be the person he’s been searching for a way back to if his autonomy, his free will, didn’t mean a thing to her?

  
  
  


Max meets her eyes and hopes she understands.   
  


  
The hand jerking Max let's go. Toothless ushers Furiosa's guard away so he can take his place. Her eyes widen, and her jaw goes rigid as the digits that previously held on to Max curl under her chin and dig into the soft parts of her cheeks. A few moments of tampering down panicked breaths later and she's nodding, pliant and defeated. Toothless, the rotten, fucking snake, makes her say it, demands that Furiosa says it out loud, like some terrible line from a old porn film, that, yes, she'll put her mouth to good use, and no, she won't misbehave.  
  
  
  
She no longer looking at Max. He wishes he could tell her it's okay. He's been through bad shit before. It's okay.  
  
  
  
But it's not okay. It's not okay.  
  
  
  
Toothless breaches Furiosa’s mouth with his thumb, sticking it inn to the meat of his palm. She chokes and coughs around it. Toothless laughs, a brittle sound, and withdraws it to hold her mouth open with two finger in each corner of her mouth. Then he pushes her forward to seal her lips around the head of Max's half hard cock.  
  
  
  
It’s been so many years. This is not the same, but Max still remembers what a mouth feels like, as well as a cunt on his tongue.  
  
  
  
And reciprocation.  
  
  
  
There had once been silent moments, filled with easy touches and whispered conversations. Max tucked them away a long time ago, as if they would crumble to dust like old photographs if he were to touch them with the same hands he uses for violence. Couldn't let himself think of the soft forms of Jessie’s safe body with the same mind that in weak moments sometimes contemplates cannibalism. They are old memories with golden edges, and this sudden warm feeling makes them come crashing back again, a harsh contrast to the sight of Furiosa defiled and humiliated with the help of his own body.  
  
  
  
Max looks away, focuses his line of sight on a crack between two wooden boards in the wall, as if he could give her some privacy that way. He's almost on his toes again, staying as still as humanly possible, while more blood drips from his wrists, and the throbbing of his heart thuds loudly in his ears.  
  
  
  
Furiosa, her mouth a little dry around him, works to accommodate Max's growing girth. Her teeth brush against his tender flesh once, but otherwise she's warm and soft. Everywhere else is cold.

 

  
  
A thought cuts through the sensation, old teaching bored into him when he was a teenager, by a mother dissatisfied by his education. Thorough conversations about protection and consent. It's goddamn unbearable that this is what his mind goes to in this situation where he has the freedom to do neither. But then again it's poignant, because when Max thinks of Furiosa he thinks of intimacy.  
  
  
  
Toothless steps back, slowly at first, a man who has built a tower out of bricks, testing to see if it will fall apart if he takes the support of his hands away. When Furiosa doesn't move he steps to the side, revealing his creation to the rest of the room, and claps his hands ones. The room that has been mostly silent whispers until now, fills with jeers. Someone cackles. The woman who's not holding Cheedo, leans against the wall and cups a hand to her crotch. The other man, the one with the fresh limp, also shows signs of arousal.  
  
  
  
And then there’s Cheedo. Max doesn’t.... He can't look that way.  
  
  
  
There's intent in Toothess' eyes when he comes back, and Max can't help but flinch to the sight of him reaching for Furiosa's neck to wrap his palm around it. A gleeful sneer splits the man's face as he shoves her nose into Max's groin.  
  
  
  
_Fuck. Oh fuck..._ _  
_  
  
  
She constricts. A sick feeling swirls in Max’s stomach as her gag reflexes takes hold. Furiosa doesn't make a single sound. Maybe she can't. Ones, twice, she convulses, but it seams to Max as if she's determined to take the abuse, and for a moment she's in control. But Toothless won't let her go, and he holds her, and holds her, and holds her.  
  
  
  
She starts writhing against his grip, pulls at the ropes keeping her arms tied to her back. Then she's fighting. Toothless chuckles and licks his lips, and gives her a shove that registers through Max and into the wall behind him. Furiosa panics, and all Max can think of is how it stimulates him, how he bends along the inside of her mouth, and how he couldn't make a fist that gives the same pressure her throat does right now.  
  
  
  
He shuts his eyes tight and chokes himself on the sounds that would make their way past his gag. He's sick for her, scared and aching, and his conflicted nerves are about to snap him in half. He bites the meat of his cheek until it hurts. He's good at keeping quiet.  
  
  
  
_Furiosa?_ _  
_  
  
  
There's a scrape of teeth, too sharp to be just that, and this time Max can't help himself. He cries out. Furiosa bucks hard, and Toothless' hand slips as a result. She pulls herself off of Max with a wet sound, gasping and coughing as if resurfacing from deep water. Breathing through her teeth, she surges forward, presses the side of her face to where his hips and thigh meet, and hiccups an incoherent sound.  
  
  
  
“M-m-mah....”  
  
  
  
Max bends his head, trying to curl in like a shield around her shivering frame. A drop of sweat runs from the short tuft of Furiosa’s hair, and trails over the Immortan's brand, now overshadowed by a blackening imprint of Toothless’ hand.  
  
  
  
She creeps closer and clings. Max shivers as the hair on the back of her head brushes his cock. It’s soft but wiry enough sting him, but he doesn't care, he doesn't care. As long as she's left alone, he doesn't care.  
  
  
  
_Don't touch her. Just don't touch her._ _  
_  
  
  
But of course, why would Toothless do that?  
  
  
  
Max _snarls_ when the man reaches for her again, and he actually startles back with a look of shock. Then something in his eyes clicks, like he now knows something he previously didn't. Then the mad grin slithers back up, and Max knows he has made a mistake.  
  
  
  
Furiosa shrinks from the hand Toothless places on her. She pushes into Max further as the man leans down close to her ear to remind her of their deal; her or the brat. With his oily voice he calls her a good girl, and promises it'll only last a little bit longer.  
  
  
  
Furiosa’s heavy weight against Max's hip shifts, and he can sense her gathering herself. She turns her face into the fabric of his pants, her hot breath wafting through to Max's skin, telling him she's not broken yet.  
  
  
  
Goddamnit. He just wanted to go home.  
  
  
  
Toothless snaps his fingers near Furiosa's ear. The reprieve is over.  
  
  
  
She's gentler when she takes Max into her mouth again. No teeth. It both comforts and disheartens Max beneath his sickening arousal. She's the safest person to him in this room, and she's being tormented. He resolves to give himself to the growing ache, so this will end faster. This feeling isn't pleasure, although it resembles it in all its perverse ways.  
  
  
  
Furiosa endures it when Toothless puts his hands on each side of her head. She endures it when he leads her movements, makes her set a frustrating pace. It takes a minute, but eventually she adapts her breathing to the thrusts. If she knows how to make this end faster she's not doing anything about it. And isn't that a terrible irony; that because no one else has managed to force her into giving head until this very moment, it will make right now harder.  
  
  
  
Toothless steps in close and thrusts his pelvis into the back of Furiosa's head. Again she tenses, cased in between the two men. She cramps up as her lips slide to press into pubic hair. The friction has gained a paper like quality. Her mouth has gone dry.  
  
  
  
Setting a rutting pace against Furiosa’s scalp, Toothless turns his attention to Max. He tells the small crowd how much their prisoners appear to be enjoying this, about how impressive Max's virility must be. Like a horse! Turned on by a woman on her knees like an animal in heat he is. Otherwise he wouldn't be hard right now would he?  
  
  
Max thinks Toothless’ head might be close enough to do some serious damage.  
  
  
  
It's difficult to avert his eyes this close to someone else. Toothless' breath wafts across Max's face, smelling sour and, something bad in the back of Max's memory says, of human flesh. A ball of tension grows in his gut. A mixture of fear and shame and what he identifies as an oncoming orgasm. Ragged gasps make their way past his gag, and it's difficult not to move his hips. He's getting close.  
  
  
  
Then the man stops his mindless humping just as Max nears the precipice. Toothless pulls Furiosa back with a dirty hand cupping her forehead, far enough for her to breathe without interference, her mouth still around the head of Max's cock.  
  
  
  
With an oily tone Toothless asks Max who Furiosa is to him. He'd seen recognition in their faces earlier. Are they lovers? Or is he an agent of hers? Is he making Max skullfuck his own sister? Max is still panting after being pulled back from the edge, too aware of every point of contact to get his head on straight. Can't answer. Doesn't have one.  
  
  
  
Toothless forces Furiosa to bring him close again only to pull them both back, then he repeats the process. Somewhere along the line Max's body starts to shiver. His knees threaten to buckle, drawing more pain from his tied wrists. A refreshed trickle of blood traces warm paths down his skin.  
  
  
  
This isn't going to stop.  
  
  
  
They can't be the only people these bastards have broken for their own perverse amusement going by the practiced ease Toothless keeps torturing Furiosa. The man studies Max for endless moments, waits until he gouges him ready, and starts over.  
  
  
  
Who is Furiosa but the one who Max opened his veins for in the presence of strangers? Unraveled himself willingly so she would know his name. For the first time since she almost bled out in his arms, Max finds himself confronted with another person who has found a way under his skin and into the fractured remains of his being. A sob escapes from his gagged mouth. Broken and shameful, he has little way of hiding his own crumbling state other than closing his eyes.  
  
  
  
There will be no going home.  
  
  
  
That's when the metal hand curls softly around his ankle.  
  
  
  
Outside the room, muffled by several walls, gunshots go off. There's shouting and them more gunshots. In Max's peripheral vision Cheedo moves. The next second her guard sinks to the floor. The youngest of Immortan Joe's black widows stands with a silver blade dripping crimson in her hand. The fallen woman never made a sound.  
  
  
  
Toothless turns his head at the commotion, the next moment he's screaming, but it's not for his fallen comrade. The hilt of the knife he previously hid in his boot now protrudes from the thickest part of his calf. He lets go of Furiosa, and she draws herself away from Max, coughing and gasping, but with both hands free. Max sees an opening, and drives his head into that of the wailing man in front of him.  
  
  
  
Toothless collapses to the floor. Furiosa follows. Throwing herself on him, she draws a gun from somewhere within his clothes. She wastes no time, and in a achingly familiar move she points it underneath his chin and pulls the trigger.  
  
  
  
Just like that Toothless' head becomes a saturated smear across the floor.  
  
  


  
Furiosa retrieves the knife before his friends can make sense of what just happened. Shaking and unsteady she rises with subdued rage and tears in her eyes, and reaches behind Max for his tied hands. She makes short work of the ropes. With a last swipe of the blade she sets him loose, ready for violence like the feral dog that he is.


	2. Cheedo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fact that she has been spared, when others have not doesn’t sit well with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all let me just apologize for the first chapter, not just the content, but the atrocious spelling and grammar mistakes. Turns out I did a huge mistake in thinking the proofreading I did two years ago was good enough. *hangs head in shame* I'm so embarrassed. Hopefully I've done a much better job on this chapter.
> 
> Concerning the rest of the story. As I said earlier it's all finished, in a sense, but now that I'm going through the chapters again I keep finding parts that need to be heavily rewritten. Like complete overhaul rewritten. I really didn't think my writing had changed that much in just two years, but apparently it did. So bear with me as I finish up the rest of this story. I wish to shorten the wait between the last three chapters for those of you who follow this story.
> 
> Lastly but not least, I figured if fury road fandom can keep resurrecting the Interceptor in almost every single fic there is after it got crushed between two war rigs in the movie, I can resurrect Valkyrie for the sake of this story. I hope you can all agree.

 

The sun comes down hard on the three of them as they make their way out of the run down building. Cheedo squints against the light. The figures she first took for more enemies lower their weapons at the same moment Furiosa and Max lower theirs. Cheedo’s knife falls.

 

Toast is there, and Valkyrie, and trailing behind them most of the small team of former war boys and capable wretcheds that were picked for this mission.

 

As soon as she sees the three of them Toast starts running. But before she has taken two steps in their direction, Furiosa strides off to the left and Max stomps off to the right, leaving Cheedo alone to meet her. Toast stares after them both in turn.

 

“What?” she says, as Cheedo reaches her. “Cheedo, is that Max?”

 

She gets no answer, because Cheedo latches herself onto her neck and starts sobbing. She wants home. She wants Dag’s voice soothing her to sleep. She _wants_ Angharad. Her sister’s arms envelop her, safe and sure, and Toast makes comforting noises into her hair. For a long time that is all.

 

* * *

 

Furiosa returns first. Valkyrie had gone after her. The sun is well on its way toward the horizon when they come back, Furiosa with with her face in a hard mask. She throws herself into the cleanup, as if working hard enough will make everything else disappear. There are bodies that need to be thrown into a pile to be burned, and houses that need to be searched.

 

This place is more of a tiny cluster of deteriorating buildings than it is a village. The people who lived her, and eventually died here owned very little of value, but whatever can be salvaged is stripped and taken.

 

You can’t build a civilized society without dealing with those who prey on others. They had come here because of the rumours that follow the groups of wanderers who make their way to the Citadel in search for a safe haven. Rumours of people who disappear and is never seen again. Then there’s the few who escaped and lived to tell the tale. They all told the same story about a cultish gathering to the north with a tendency to lure inn wanderers and….

 

Cheedo didn’t think such evil could exist even in a world such as this postapocalyptic wasteland, and now she’s one of those who lived to tell the tale.

 

She should have known better.

 

Nobody asks what happened, and Cheedo doesn’t speak of it, not even to Toast. It's not hers to tell. When Joe was alive they never spoke of what was done to another wife, unless the wife herself breached the subject. Still, there's more than enough understanding mixed into the searching looks Toast gives her. Valkyrie, on her part, looks at Furiosa with knowing eyes.

 

A small car cemetery lies to the side of the village, containing mostly stripped down vesicles with more or less only their frames left. There’s an untouched car among them that looks as if it hasn't been there very long judging by the tire tracks in the dirt. They find a leather jacked missing one of its sleeves in the back of it.

 

Valkyrie buries into their rations and leaves enough food and water to last one man a few days in the back of Max’s car. She also checks the guzz cans, and would probably have ordered them refilled had it been needed. Furiosa doesn’t say much about it, but Cheedo sees her nod silently in response to something Valkyrie says to her.

 

A few of the former War Boys goes down into the basement of the building, and reemerges carrying two emaciated children; a girl who could be anywhere around her early teens, and a small boy no more than three years old. Their families are nowhere in sight.

 

Cheedo thinks of that room in the basement, now containing four dead bodies. Every villager here are dead now, and they weren’t many. Apparently parley hadn’t been an option. They’d defended their lair of brutalities with their last shreds of life. Whether anyone of these people had been the children’s parents or their kidnappers is anyone's guess, because the children do not speak. Either way it's just as well.

 

* * *

 

Although Cheedo is no longer called 'The Fragile', she knows there's an air about her that causes others to perceive her as less of a threat. It's how she tricked Rictus, and what caused her guard down in that basement to forget about her prisoner until Cheedo plunged the woman’s own knife in between her ribs.

 

It hadn’t been soon enough though. If only she’d been quicker.

 

It had already been late in the afternoon when the rest of the search party found them. Within the hour the sun has fallen to the horizon. It's while they're getting ready for the night that Max comes trudging back. He makes straight for his car, grunting at Toast tries to greet him as he passes. Her brow furrows with bewildered disappointment, but Furiosa lays a hand on her shoulder, and keeps her from following him.

 

He has the air of someone who has every intention of taking off without a word, but when he opens the driver’s side door Max comes to a halt. From where she’s standing Cheedo can only guess that he has seen the extra rations Valkyrie brought to his car.

 

Many of the crew have already lost interest in the scruffy looking stranger. Those who haven’t avert their eyes as if sensing there might be something private about the moment when Max looks up to find Furiosa.

 

She has wrapped herself in a thick blanket to ward of the cooling air of twilight, and she doesn’t hold his gaze for long before she turns away, wandering off to the rig where there’s no people around. It is Valkyrie that nods in Max’s direction as a gesture of confirmation, that, yes, those rations are his now. Then she too makes her way to the rig, as the last rays of light punctuates the end of the day.

 

* * *

 

Dusk falls without the sound of an engine driving away over the dunes. Max keeps to his car and only offers short gruff replies to any war boy who dare approach him. Needless to say it doesn’t take long before they lose interest and leave him alone.

 

Valkyrie has the fire burning high and bright when Toast turns to Furiosa.

 

“Is he coming with us?”

 

Furiosa moves her jaw as if testing that it can be done. When she speaks her voice comes out hoarse. “I don't think so.”

 

“Why? Did you ask him?” Toast presses on, but Furiosa is already walking away.

 

Toast looks from Furiosa's retreating back to Cheedo, as if she might have the answer to the woman's sudden lack of patience. She shakes her head, and Toast doesn’t ask any more questions.

 

***

 

When most of their team is well and truly asleep, Cheedo creeps from her bedroll. Toast shifts under her blanket nearby, but remains in her dreamworld. Valkyrie has taken first watch, and the faint reflection of moonlight in her eyes follows Cheedo as she passes the Vuvalini.

 

Low mumbling meets Cheedo halfway towards Max's car, on and off again like a one-sided conversation. It stops entirely as she gets closer.

 

Max sits so still when she comes around to his side, with a blanket over his shoulders, and his back against the car-door. The light from Cheedo’s lamp gives his eyes a wild look frighteningly reminiscent of the one he’d carried in the frenzied few moments after Furiosa had cut him loose. Cheedo’s heart lurches in her chest. Max had bashed in the skull of the second man in that room before he’d even regained enough thought to tuck himself back into his own pants again.

 

It’s one thing to witness the kind of violence he can produce, but Cheedo never saw him lift a finger unless provoked, or frightened.

 

She should have been quicker.

 

He lowers the sawed off shotgun when he sees it’s her. In the moonlight, his face is only partly visible. Maybe it adds to the shadows in his cheeks under his full grown beard, but he looks a little worse for wear, like food has been scarce, as well as sleep.

 

“Can I sit with you for a while?” Cheedo asks in a hushed tone.

 

His face carries a mix of weariness and exhaustion, and he looks everywhere but directly at Cheedo. Some sort of conflict seems to be taking place behind his eyes. The dip of his head can barely be called a nod, but it’s there. So Cheedo lower herself down next to him. The wounds on his wrists comes into view when she settles the lamp between them.

 

“Your hands,” she gasps.

 

Max makes a noncommittal sound, and looks down at them without interest. “I washed them. It'll do.”

 

“The hell it will!” Cheedo says. “You could get an infection. We got bandages and antiseptic in the rig. Don't move.” She's off in that very direction before he can protest.

 

Max doesn't allow her to clean his wounds with the alcohol she fishes from the kit she comes back with. Instead he dabs the white rag she gives him against the angry rope burns himself with unsteady hands, hissing as the antiseptic does its job. The red at his knuckles is not his own. Cheedo makes sure he's thorough, and only takes over when securing the bandage on his right wrist proves too troublesome for his shaking hands.

 

“You must have started out with nine lives. Like cats do,” she tells him as she tucks the edge of the bandage in neatly.

 

Max, true to his form, gives her silence in response. Heat rises in Cheedo’s cheeks. Has she said something wrong? She rarely can tell. He’d been taciturn the last time they met as well, but that doesn’t mean she’s used to it. Come to think of it, this is the only conversation between just the two of them they ever had.

 

She repacks the medkit, and directs her gaze outwards towards the sandplains under the starry night sky.

 

Once there had been a man. He might have been her father, might not. This man appears like a giant in Cheedo’s memories, carrying her like a child as he tells her about the stars and the constellations, their history and myths, and how they were created and what they were made of. He’d had a thick, long beard she remembers tugging at. There’d been crinkles in his eyes as he laughed.

 

She remembers he'd draw an image of the galaxy in the sand and used a spec of dust to represent Earth. Cheedo often marvels at the sheer magnitude of that information, and wonders if it's true; the number of stars in the sky, more numerous than all the grains of sand in the wasteland. They’d known so much back in the Before.

 

“You're going back out there aren't you,” Cheedo says.

 

Max hums.

 

“For how long?”

 

His reply is a short, almost mournful glance in her direction, which he turns back to the hands in his lap.

 

Cheedo bites her lips. She shouldn't be surprised, but the answer still stings.

 

Joe had made sure no one ever touched Cheedo. He’d kept her away from prying hands since that day she'd been taken as a young girl. He never showed any sexual interest in his wives unless they had a chance of conceiving, and Cheedo has yet to menstruate for the first time even now. She knows that in this world, being untouched makes her somewhat of a rarity. A unicorn, Dag would say, although Cheedo doesn't know what that is. What she does know is that this sets her apart from her sisters.

 

The fact that she has been spared, when others have not doesn’t sit well with her.

 

“I'm sorry,” she says to the desert, breaking the silence, because this thing that has been crawling inside her needs to come out. “I wanted to be useful and I got careless. It's my fault.” It’s all wrong how fat tears start streaming down her cheeks, but she can’t stop them. She's crying again, even though she has no right to. Was she the one tied up to that wall, or on her knees? Out of the three of them it had been Max and Furiosa who got caught with the worst of it. And they’re not crying. Or even talking. Yet here Cheedo is, unable to stop her sobs from coming out. She wipes at her face, and snivels. “We could have helped you if I hadn't gotten caught, before... before....”

 

It’s difficult to get the words out, and for a long horrible moment she can only fight the painful lump in her throat.

 

“No,” Max says. Through her tears Cheedo can see him turn his face towards her, a troubled frown on his brow. She hides her face in her hands, and begins sobbing in earnest, muffling the sounds she makes with her palms.

 

There’s movement beside her, and after a silent moment rough fabric wraps around her shoulders. The blanket is warm with Max’s own body heat, and smells of old musk and gun oil. The light from her lamp casts half his tired face in shadows as he crosses the edges of the blanket over one another at her front. Cheedo automatically grabs the fabric, buries her face in it, letting herself be soother by the comforting weight in place of arms.

 

“Hey,” Max murmurs. He settles down a little closer, which is still an arm's reach away. His voice is low as if that will make the words come more easily. “Some people,” he starts, but a pained look twists his face. He clears his throat. “They do what suits them best. Doesn’t matter who gets in the way.”

 

Cheedo sniffs and wipes her nose. “But I was stupid,” she says. He has to understand that.

 

“I don’t care,” Max says, almost tersely. It’s enough to startle Cheedo out of her spiraling state, if only for a moment.

 

“How can you just say that?”

 

“Because so was I.” Max hefts his jacket tighter around himself and turns his face towards the salt plains. “There was a child in the middle of nowhere, and I…” He shakes his head. “Helped.”

 

A cross of two memories; an image of the emaciated children they’d found earlier, and Max’s voice overlapping it.

 

_That’s bait._

 

Why shouldn’t he have helped? But that’s the old Cheedo thinking. The new Cheedo has seen the wasteland up close and knows not to expect anything good from strangers. Even Max had once left her and her sisters to a terrible fate, before Furiosa brought him around. You never know who is going to stab you in the back, or be willing to share their last ration with you, or who will do both depending on the circumstances. Kindness can be a dangerous thing out here. But Cheedo still doesn’t see why that makes her blameless.

 

“You can be as careful as can be out here,” Max murmurs, “that still doesn’t mean some people won’t exploit you if they get the opportunity.”

 

“How do you know that?” Cheedo asks.

 

He turns his gaze downwards to something in his hands. Cheedo can’t tell what it is in the darkness. “Was a blood bag,” he says.

 

Cheedo dries the fresh tears, and turns her eyes to the salt plains along with him. Quiet hiccups of sobs still make their way from that dull, painful knot in her chest as the silence between them stretches out. The stars are all out in the cloudless night sky. They twinkle carelessly as Max’s words echo in her mind, but she’s not sure if she understands them just yet.

 

“Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka,” Max recites quietly as if to himself, as he watches the stars.

 

“Orion’s belt,” Cheedo summarises for him, finding the constellation just over the black horizon. “The three Marias, or Kings, depending on who you ask.”

 

His gaze comes back to her, as if surprised she could even hear him speak. A kind of recognition slowly appears in his expression.

 

“Or The Three Sisters,” Max says.

 

That makes Cheedo smile, and smiling makes her cry. Hiding her renewed sniveling does nothing. She buries her face in the blanket again as sobs shake her body once more. She wants nothing more than to be home again.

 

By her side a heavy sigh is exhaled, and then there’s rustling of leather and sand as Max shifts again. The hand that he places on her shoulder doesn’t startle her. It’s cold, but gentle and comforting, and that’s why she leans in and turns her face into the front of his jacket.

 

Men are not to be trusted. They demand and they take and they never give back what is given to them. Cheedo knows that’s more of a precaution rather than a rule of thumb, but that doesn’t mean the implications don’t frighten her sometimes. She spent the entire drive from the Rockriders’ pass back to the Citadel carefully watching Max as he held Furiosa.

 

Maybe that’s why she trusts him.

 

When Cheedo leans into Max, still weeping like a child, he stays still for a very long moment. But then his arm comes around her shoulder, tentative at first, and settles there like an old gesture he relearned only just now.

 

“She won’t look at me,” Cheedo manages to get out, and she pulls the blanket tighter around herself. The meaning of who ‘she’ is hangs in the air between them.

 

Max’s chest rises and falls again with a heavy exhale. “Give it time.”

 

“I… shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have let her take my place.” Cheedo would have gone on, but Max interrupts her.

 

“No, stop it,” he whispers, and it’s as if there’s something frightened in his gruff voice. The arm around her shoulders tenses. “Please.”

 

Cheedo doesn’t get the chance to consider it, because the soft scrape of a boot against dirt comes from behind her just then. Max let’s go to grab for his shotgun, but he freezes with his line of sight on something behind Cheedo. She turns with him.

 

“Fool.”

 

Furiosa’s voice sounds worse than before, but now it’s tainted with something harsh. Standing by the headlight of the car she looks as if she’s ready for a fight. The light from Cheedo’s lamp does not reach her eyes.

 

Seeing her makes all those terrible feelings of helplessness and shame just swell up and burst like an overripe fruit. With no other way to hide it, Cheedo turns her face into Max’s shoulder again, new tears pushing their way out and down her cheeks.

 

Furiosa’s footsteps makes their way towards them.

 

“She came to talk,” Max says, with something that sounds a lot like wariness in his tone. Cheedo would say it’s there because of Furiosa’s presence for the simple reason that it wasn’t there before.

 

But Furiosa doesn’t seem to hear him. There’s a creak of leather as she kneels down. “Cheedo,” she says. “Give her to me.” Her voice is hard.

 

“Don't!” Cheedo croaks between two sobbing breaths, her face still hidden in Max’s jacket. “Please don’t fight.” Because she can feel it in the air between them, she’s seen it in the the way they can’t look at each other. The shutting down of emotions, and the aggression that follows; They would rather flee or fight than address what happened.

 

Furiosa and Max both have the good sense to shut up. The air of unease that follows manifests like a sickness inside Cheedo. Then slowly, Max carefully takes her still sobbing form by the shoulders, and delivers her into Furiosa's arms.

 

“I’m sorry,” Cheedo hiccups as the unforgiving metal of Furiosa’s prosthetic slants across her back. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

 

“Cheedo, what?” Furiosa’s eyes go to Max if only for just a moment, and maybe she finds her answer there, because her embrace tightens. Cheedo can feel the slight shaking of her head against her own scalp.

 

Furiosa runs her hand over Cheedo’s hair. It’s a rare thing from her, and Cheedo can’t see why she deserves it, but she welcomes it nonetheless. This terrible day has ended, but it feels as if it has lasted forever, and she’ll give anything for a gentle touch.

 

“Shhh,” Furiosa whispers against Cheedo’s ear. “You did the best you could. Shush now. It’s all right. You did good. I would have asked for nothing more.”

 

Max moves, draws his good foot under himself to get up, as if Furiosa being there means he’s no longer needed.

 

“Are you leaving now?” Cheedo ask, as she lifts her head from Furiosa’s shoulder, blinking away her tears, and sniffing.

 

Max stops, his back half turned towards them as he looks down to the thing in his hand. His shoulders hitch minutely in a shrug. “Mm... Might as well.”

 

Cheedo turns to Furiosa, silently begging her to say something, anything at all. But Furiosa’s face is stony, her eyes are lowered, the unexplained anger from earlier, gone. She stays quiet.

 

“We have enough food,” Cheedo says. “You can come with us. Rest for a few days.” By her side Furiosa bites her lips.

 

For a moment it's as if Max hasn't heard a single thing Cheedo just said. He just stands there, a solemn figure a little bit off from the her and Furiosa. Clearing his throat he says, “I'll make my own way.”

 

This finally draws a reaction from Furiosa. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but Cheedo could swear she sees the kindling of a strange mixture of something she can only describe as impatience and concern.

 

“Your spark plugs are as good as shot,” Furiosa says. There might have been ire in her expression just now, but her voice is calm, if a little bit firm. “And your brake pads will be grinding against the discs in less than a month if they’re not replaced soon. Unless you have new ones hidden away somewhere we can get you fixed up at the Citadel.”

 

Max’s hand rests on the door handle, his head bowed. He says nothing as the moment draws out.

 

“You can leave whenever you want,” Furiosa goes on. “You have my word.”

 

Finally he turns his gaze past his shoulder, and meets her eyes. Something unsaid passes between them. Then Max turns back to the thing in his hand. He nods once.

 

“Alright.”

 

Furiosa exhales and closes her eyes.


End file.
